St. Louis Noir

by Scott Phillips

  The Caddy turns onto Kingshighway. I don’t know whether Doug is going home or to a restaurant for lunch, but on the off chance it’s the former I want to find out where they live; if it’s the latter I’ll drive on.

  At I-44, Doug takes the on-ramp, heading east toward Illinois. I don’t know that side of the river well but maybe there are some nice towns within commuting distance. I never saw or heard of one, but still.

  * * *

  It should have been simple. Cheryl used to work there, and in fact the reason she quit was a fear of getting robbed. A lack of attention paid to security, cash lying in a safe left unlocked half the time. She told me about the elderly proprietor, superstitious about hiring a guard, so set in his ways the nightly routine hadn’t varied since the late 1950s, according to the old lady who worked with her. If I hadn’t gotten my name into the papers, Cheryl never would have known she’d had any part in it. Listening to her testify, I understood the degree of guilt she felt for having innocently tipped me to it. I understood it because I felt the same guilt, because I’d been the one to get Doug involved. The proceeds were supposed to get the construction firm up and running. I even told myself we’d pay the old man back once the money started rolling in.

  * * *

  Across the river the Caddy pulls off at the miserable, barren village of Sauget. I maintain a discreet distance and when it pulls into a large parking lot, freshly paved and serving a number of businesses, I keep driving. He parks a good distance from any of the buildings, and the Caddy’s windows are tinted so I can’t see what he’s up to, but based on my observations of nearly everyone I’ve met since getting out, I imagine my brother-in-law is checking one pointless fucking thing or another on his phone.

  I pull into the lot of a restaurant on the opposite corner of the intersection. Inside I get a table next to the window and order a cheeseburger with fries. I’m almost done eating when Doug finally steps down out of the giant jeep-like vehicle––another ubiquitous aspect of modern American life that makes me feel like a time traveler––and strides toward one of the buildings that border the western and northern edges of the big lot. He’s not headed for the furniture liquidators, nor to the used–kitchen supply warehouse, nor to any of the various storage bays. As he passes a parked county sheriff’s car, he gives the deputy a friendly, familiar wave which the officer returns with crisp military élan, and he then disappears inside a building marked with a giant neon sign reading, CINNAMON BUNZZ: A Gentleman’s Club. Silhouettes of chesty women recline atop and lean onto the sides of the sign, and I wonder what Doug could possibly be doing in such a place. The old Doug wouldn’t have considered doing business with any sort of establishment of an immoral nature; I once had to hire a couple of near-strangers to help me tuck-point a massage parlor in St. Charles County because Doug wouldn’t have anything to do with it. Maybe the experience of running a big construction company all these years has made him look at money differently.

  I’m not particularly hungry anymore but I order a slice of peach pie and drink some more coffee and wait for Doug to come out. When I’m finished the waitress keeps coming over to warm my coffee up, but I’m getting self-conscious sitting there for such a long time. I’m about to get up and walk to my car when Doug finally comes out the front door and heads for his car, smiling and nodding at the deputy. I leave a twenty on a fifteen-dollar tab and thank the waitress as I pass by her on my way out the door.

  Following the freak Caddy back into town, I try to guess where Doug and Kathie will have ended up. He’s done well, by the looks of things. Maybe Ladue? Creve Coeur? On the back of the Caddy there’s a sticker for a radio station, and I feel a sudden desire to hear music. Knowing Doug, I assume that 99.1 JOY!FM is a rock station, but what comes over my speakers is treacly, weak-kneed Jesus pop. I’ve got nothing against religious people, but I had a cellie awhile back who used to listen to that Christ elevator music and it fucking scarred me. I listen for a couple of minutes, wondering if maybe the Caddy isn’t actually Kathie’s car. Surely Doug is up there rocking to Foghat and AC/DC on KSHE, but it strikes me that this crap, if not explicitly Protestant, is certainly not Catholic enough for the likes of Mary Kathleen Gillihan McCarran.

  We pass the exits for Ladue. Then we pass 270, which by my lights is the best way to get to Creve Coeur. Once again I’m struck by how little I know my hometown anymore; there might be new freeways or underground tunnels leading to all the suburbs for all I know. Finally we arrive in Chesterfield, now built up to an astonishing degree, outlet malls and upscale hotels and shopping centers as opposed to the open farmland I remember. We take an exit I’m pretty sure didn’t exist in my day and I consider slowing down in case Doug is watching, but I know perfectly well he doesn’t think that way, and I stay within an eighth of a mile of his ass-ugly Caddy.

  When Doug pulls into a cul-de-sac I keep driving. Half an hour later I return. The Caddy sits parked in the circular drive of a three-story mansion, gabled and mansarded and looking like something out of a movie. The notion that my sister might live in such a house is completely foreign to me, but I feel a quiet pride that my sacrifice has allowed her and her kids to live out their lives in luxury.

  And then, heading back to I-64, I find myself wondering why there are school stickers on Doug’s car, which appears brand new. Twenty-eight years ago my littlest niece was not quite two years old. Must be grandkids.

  * * *

  Mrs. Floyd Willis was how the Post-Dispatch identified the bookkeeper in the morning, though it was long past the time when the papers named women as though they didn’t have first names of their own. I suppose that was all the information they’d dug up by press time. The next morning she was Mrs. Nina Willis and the next day there was a note that it was pronounced Nine-uh. She wasn’t supposed to be there when we came in at closing time, should have been at home with Floyd watching Magnum, P.I. or T.J. Hooker or The Cosby Show. When we bumrushed the old man into the back room and Doug saw her, he freaked out. He shot her in the face and then shot the old man. Nobody was supposed to get shot. Nobody was even supposed to have live ammo, especially not Doug.

  * * *

  Back at the motel, I call Paula and tell her about my day. She’s worried, doesn’t think I should be there. “You’re not safe out there in the world. Come on back to KC, sweetie.”

  “It’s just another day or two.”

  “Be careful and don’t do anything foolish.”

  I did my full stretch. I have no parole officer to answer to, no restrictions on my travel, but she’s still afraid I’m going to break some law and go back to prison. I remember meeting her in the visitation room, coming to see her own no-good burglar brother, how sad she was about him and where his dumbassery had landed him. “I won’t do anything stupid, sugar. I’m coming back to you.”

  She’s the only person I ever told the truth to about August of ’87. Since it’s safe to assume Doug never came clean to anyone, it’s a secret only we three know. She swears she’s never told her kids or the rest of the extended family, who all treat me fine, considering their beloved mother––aunt, sister, grandmother, etcetera––married a convicted murderer while he was still incarcerated. She’s smart and pretty and if it weren’t for her I’d be flopping somewhere, maybe in a shelter, maybe planning something nonviolent that would get me sent back to the relatively uncomplicated existence I knew in the joint. So do I consider myself lucky? Yes, officer, I most certainly do.

  * * *

  At one thirty in the morning I walk over to the parking lot of a bar near the motel and make a quick round looking for a vehicle with the keys inside, belonging to someone who showed up late and already drunk, someone who might even be too drunk to realize they’ve had their vehicle stolen when they come out at closing time. Thirty years ago I might have hot-wired one, but I have no idea whether this is even possible anymore. And good fortune is with me tonight. A recent-model Ford, a small, ugly thing with Illinois plates, sits there with its door ajar
and dome light burning, a set of keys lying there on the asphalt. I pick them up in a latex-gloved hand and tell myself I’m doing the owner a favor; he won’t get shot through the windshield driving home plastered, and tomorrow he’ll get his car back, with a functioning battery to boot.

  I park down the street from Doug’s house and, despite myself, drift off to sleep in the driver’s seat. At four forty-five I awaken to a rap at the window. I squint at a flashlight carried by a short, thickset woman in uniform, and I pick up one of the latex gloves as a shield between my fingers and the crank before fumbling with the window.

  “May I ask what you’re doing out here this time of night, sir?” She looks to be in her late forties, with a shiny, round face, and she lacks the belligerence some rent-a-cops have.

  I’m dressed in a nice, clean shirt, my haircut is a mere three days old, and I made a point of shaving before leaving the motel. Two-thirds of a lifetime spent in custody have made me slick when dealing with authority. “I’m sorry, officer. I was making a surprise visit to my baby sister and brother-in-law, they live right there. I drove in from Springfield, didn’t get in until about two, and didn’t want to wake them up. Like I said, they’re not expecting me.”

  She shines the flashlight into the car and sees nothing of particular interest, and I note that her uniform is that of a neighborhood security patrol, so she probably doesn’t have the means to run my plates. “What’s the matter with a hotel?” she asks.

  “I’m fine sleeping in the car. Doug’s an early riser, so’s my sister. If you don’t want me on the street, I can clear out.”

  When she looks at me as though trying to judge my character via my physiognomy, I know I’ve won. My face has always been as sweet and honest as a toddler’s.

  * * *

  I wake again with the dawn. I turn the radio on low and wait.Doug eventually comes out fully dressed and drives the Caddy away. The house has what looks to me like a three-car garage; what the hell are he and Kathie storing in there, anyway?

  Another half hour and the passage of time starts making me antsy. If Kathie doesn’t walk out the door in another fifteen minutes, I’ll abandon the car in the parking lot of the outlet mall and call a cab. When the front door opens, it’s not Kathie. It’s a woman in her late thirties or early forties with luxuriant, shoulder-length blond hair, tottering on three-inch heels, made up so elaborately that it’s hard––though not impossible––to make out the look of frustration and resentment on her face. Looking closer, I think she may have had some sort of plastic surgery or neurological event that froze her face that way. She grabs the Post-Dispatch off the driveway and reenters the house. A niece? The oldest might be that age. The younger one? Maybe. I try to remember exactly what their ages would be and after a minute I give up.

  I’m about to leave when the garage door opens. There are three cars inside, all of them monstrosities like Doug’s Caddy. I wonder which one is Kathie’s. A giant black vehicle pulls out, the blonde at the wheel, and I give it a minute to get down the street before starting my engine and following.

  She takes 64 all the way into town and gets off at McCausland. Waiting at the off-ramp stoplight I see a pink cursive monogram on the rear windshield: TML. That puzzles me for a moment until I realize that the M in the middle is the largest letter, and that the initials are actually TLM, and as I follow her turning left toward the park, I try to think what the TL could stand for. Little Teresa’s middle name, I’m pretty sure, was Jane, after my mom, and the other niece’s first name––all I can call forth from my memory––was Marie. Maybe this is little Mikey’s wife.

  I follow her to a school and drive on by when she turns into the parking lot. This is starting to get confusing, and I turn back to the freeway to drop the car off someplace where my taxi bill back to the Wentzville motel won’t be ruinous.

  * * *

  “Can you help me with some of this Internet business?” I ask Paula.

  “Well, that’s a first.”

  I explain the situation to her, leaving out the stolen car. “Can you get on there and find out if my little nephew Mikey’s married?”

  “Probably. What’s his last name?”

  “McCarran.”

  “Born when?”

  “Seventy-nine, maybe ’80?”

  “Middle name?”

  “John? James? Something with a J.”

  “That’s real helpful.”

  I watch the television for a while, a Columbo rerun, and right before Peter Falk gets that look in his one real eye and starts dismantling the killer’s story, the little phone trills. I’m still not accustomed to the fucking thing and the ringtone makes me jump.

  “Hello.”

  “Your nephew’s married, but he lives in Florida. Another thing you’re not going to like much.”

  “Okay.”

  “Your brother-in-law’s got a Facebook account.”

  “I thought everybody did now.”

  “It’s what’s on it. That lady who dropped off the kids at the middle school, that’s his wife, Tamara, and they have four kids.”

  I feel nauseous. My throat constricts, and though I’m alone in the room, I’m still embarrassed that tears are welling in my eyes. “Kathie’s dead?”

  “No, sweetie, she’s alive. She’s got her own page.”

  “That’s impossible. Neither one of them would ever get divorced. They’re more Catholic than the pope.”

  “Well, they are, and from the looks of it, Doug is a pretty active member of some megachurch out there in Chesterfield, so I’d say he left the whole Catholic thing behind with your sister. Sorry.”

  “I can’t believe she’d allow that.”

  “It only takes one to make a divorce. I Googled Douglas McCarran St. Louis and got all kinds of responses. News articles about the construction firm, charity stuff, that megachurch. Looks like he’s a big swinging dick in your hometown, hon. Also, there’s rumors he’s planning to run for lieutenant governor.”

  Dougie? Dim Doug? Douglas McCarran the panicky impulse killer, lieutenant governor of the State of Missouri? It sounds about right, actually. “Find out where Kathie lives, would you?”

  * * *

  Late in the afternoon I’m in Dogtown, parked on a residential street not far from Doug’s construction company. Kathie’s house is smaller than the one she and Doug lived in back when. The aluminum frame of her screen door is twisted out of position, as though someone very drunk tried to break in, and the grass is high enough she’s likely to get a citation before long. Shame on Mikey for going down to Florida. I’ll have to get Paula to find out where my nieces are, see if they have husbands who can step up to the plate like men.

  Twenty minutes after five she pulls up in a little Asian car, one of those makes that didn’t exist when I was free, and parks in front of the house. She’s shorter than I remember, getting fat, and she limps as she carries a bag of groceries up the steps. It seems to me that she’s aged more than I have since the last time I saw her; she could be my older sister. Hell, she looks like she could be our mom’s older sister.

  * * *

  Next day I have lunch again at the Sauget restaurant and wait for the big ugly Caddy to show in the strip club lot. One good thing about working with Doug was how reliable he was. A creature of habit, you might say, predictable as the phases of the moon. Now I have an idea Dougie Boy might be a regular at Cinnamon Bunzz; the question is, how regular? Once a week, twice? Five times?

  And at 12:27 he pulls into the lot and parks in damn near the same spot as a couple days earlier. That’s all I need for today, and I finish my burger and leave without waiting for Doug to get out of his vehicle, careful nonetheless not to let him see me going to my car.

  * * *

  I call Paula that night and reassure her that nothing bad is going to happen, that I’ll be back as soon as I can be. That might be tomorrow night or it might not. When I get off the phone I head over to the tavern from whose lot I borrowed my wheels the o
ther evening, and find the recovered vehicle sitting there, presumably locked this time. At the bar I nurse a beer and listen to a sad, hollow-cheeked man telling a friend about the difficulties involved in getting his stolen car back from the impound. I feel like buying him and his friend a round as compensation but resist the temptation.

  * * *

  Unlike her unfortunate employer, Mrs. Floyd Willis––Nina––survived the bullet to her brain, though not without sustaining some serious intellectual deficits, as the doctors called them. At trial she testified that I had acted alone, and that she’d remember my face anywhere. In fact, Doug and I had both been wearing rubber, over-the-head Ronald Reagan masks, which we’d thought would be hilarious. I didn’t contradict anything in her testimony, since the notion that I’d acted alone served my purposes well. I had a real bleeding-heart judge––not many of those around anymore, not in Missouri––and though I declined to reveal where I’d hidden the proceeds of the robbery, he sentenced me to twenty-eight years. Every time I had a shot at parole they’d ask where I’d stashed the money and I’d tell them I couldn’t rightly remember. But it all went into Doug’s construction business, which was supposed to be mine as well.

  Which is just the way the shit happened to stick to the wall that time.

  * * *

  At eleven thirty the next morning I park my car in back of Cinnamon Bunzz next to what I hope and presume is an emergency exit and walk around the corner to the front. Though the presence of the cop car fills me with dread, as a test of will I give the deputy a friendly salute when I pass. He returns it with a friendly grin.